"This is everything that woman had prophesied?"

Arzhen Vasiliev stared at the pitiful stack of files on his desk. It was a meager, dog-eared pile that looked less like the accumulated wisdom of a seventeen-year reign and more like the forgotten paperwork of a minor clerk who had died mid-shift and been left to mummify in the archives.

"No, my Prince." The aide said, face downcast, apologetic and terrified all at once. "Most of the prophecy records have been lost. Or destroyed. It was Lord Delanivis and Lord Nikolas’s orders."

Of course it was.

Arzhen almost laughed. The Delanivis family had been thorough, he had to give them that.

They had successfully erased her, wiped the record clean, made sure that whatever predictions she had made, whatever disasters she had prevented, whatever lives she had saved, would vanish into the same obscurity as her body.

Arzhen knew that a fake’s prophecy would not amount to anything. He knew long ago that she had failed every divine test. She could not predict anything accurately or pull visions from the ether like a true Saintess.

She always needed clues. Data. Patterns. Mortal information that anyone could gather if they bothered to pay attention.

Pathetic, right?

Where she got those clues, he had never bothered to learn. It was almost embarrassing, after all, how desperate she was.

But thanks to Eastiel Edengold, Arzhen had begun to reconsider.

If he had not known that Eastiel Edengold loved her, then he would never have questioned everything.

Cecilia was dead. Yet her body was missing where he had left her. No one had found her or reported her. No one has cared.

But Eastiel loved her.

Which meant, despite his expectation that no one would look for her or cared enough even if they saw her lying dead in a ditch, someone might have hidden her.

Now, Arzhen had accepted that he could not find Cecilia’s body. The searches had turned up nothing. So, someone might have found her and hidden her. Right?

Who would want her body anyway? No one loved her. Someone might have preserved her out of spite and opportunity. Because her body was a weapon, and weapons were meant to be stored until the right moment to strike.

To strike him, of course. Her heart was crushed. Everyone with brains would’ve connected it to him, someone who would want her heart destroyed more than anything to break the bond.

He thought everyone despised her.

That was what everyone had told him. That was what he had experienced his entire life. The court whispered about her nuisance. The temple barely tolerated her. The people resented her prophecies.

She had fooled everyone into believing she was a Saintess, and everyone must have been fed up with her deception. Everyone must have been waiting for her to fall.

So he had assumed that even if someone stumbled across her body, they would curse her name and spit on her corpse and leave her to rot.

Perhaps he was wrong.

Like how he had been wrong about Eastiel Edengold.

The Golden Lion King had opposed her at every turn. He had criticized the empire and the temple. He had challenged her method publicly, questioned her authority openly, looked at her position with the kind of contempt that should have marked him as her greatest enemy.

Arzhen had watched from a distance and thought, Good. Here is a man who sees her for what she really is.

Apparently, that man had actually loved her.

It still curdled in Arzhen’s stomach like spoiled milk. Eastiel Edengold had been in love with Cecilia the entire time. His opposition had not been hatred. It had been frustration, perhaps.

Frustration that she was married to someone else? Frustration that she was trapped in a role that rightfully wasn’t hers? Frustration that he could not have her?

So. Perhaps Arzhen had been wrong about other things too.

He still believed firmly that everyone hated Cecilia Araceli. She was a fraud after all. That her prophecies were worthless and her life was a lie and her death was, at worst, an inconvenience for those who had wanted to destroy her themselves.

But he now considered the possibility that someone might have tolerated her enough to use her.

Not love her. Love was for women like Ruby Vaiva, beautiful, fragile, gifted, genuinely divine. Love was for women who passed their tests and proved their worth. Cecilia was not worthy of love. Cecilia was barely worthy of being a corpse.

But a corpse could still be useful.

Someone must’ve stumbled upon her body accidentally, since no one would deliberately search for a woman worth so little, and see an opportunity.

A way to accuse him of murder. Even if they had to take her body and preserve it, freezing it or embalming it or whatever one did with inconvenient dead women, they would do it, would they not?

He could not fathom preserving someone so useless. But perhaps to pull him down, someone would make that sacrifice.

People were petty like that.

So. He was hoping that the surviving records might contain some clue. Some hint. Some thread he could pull to unravel the mystery of where Cecilia’s body had gone, who had taken it, who was planning to use it against him, and how he could stop them before they succeeded.

He needed to know where to go. Who to talk to. Who could restore him to his position and destroy that Golden Lion forever.

But this—

This one, pathetic stack of files.

This was all that was salvageable from that woman’s seventeen years of work.

He picked up the folder marked with Cecilia’s handwriting. It was a handwriting he would recognize anywhere with the amount of letters and notes she so pathetically wrote for him.

That woman who would never be happy and content no matter what... that woman who always insisted on doing too much... to have everything... to save everyone... that woman who he knew... he knew would never be able to satisfy...

Her impossible standards, her tall dreams and idealism... her ungratefulness and inability to be happy with what she had and what she deserved from him—

—despite how worthless she was.

That beating heart against his claws... that last smile she showed him.

Yes. He had successfully made her happy and ended her worthless existence.

"My prince, about the Saintess and her mate..."

The aide’s voice was hesitant now, tiptoeing into new territory like a man testing thin ice with a very long stick. "It seems that the Delanivis family will soon lose the war."

Arzhen let out a short, humorless laugh. "Useless." He spat the word like it had personally offended him. "After all the trust Ruby gave them... ha."

He shook his head, his lip curling. "Ruby prophesied the Emperor’s death. And they still could not do their part."

Just as expected. Of course he remained the best option for Ruby. Not that there was ever any doubt.

"The Crown Prince has agreed to ascend the throne some days ago, my Prince." The aide paused, gauging Arzhen’s reaction. "The problem is, he has been... pressuring the Saintess. To tell the world who killed the late Emperor. Since she prophesied his death, everyone now expects her to know the truth of it."

"How would she know? She only conveys the words of the gods," he said. "She is not like Ce—"

He stopped.

The name hovered on the tip of his tongue.

Cecilia.

Ruby was not like Cecilia.

Ruby received visions and she delivered them exactly as she received them. She was a messenger. A vessel for the gods’ words.

If the gods did not tell her who killed the Emperor, she would not know.

Yes, Cecilia would have known. Cecilia might have already identified the killer and spread the words. But that wasn’t a saintess’ job. She only did all that pathetic work to keep her fraudulent life. So what was it all worth? Still nothing.

"Anyway." Arzhen said brusquely, pushing past the moment before it could settle. "Who is to say it was not the Crown Prince himself who killed his father? He must be pressuring Ruby to threaten her. If she says something wrong..."

Ruby and Nikolas were in a difficult spot right now. That much was clear. The war was turning against them. The Crown Prince was circling like a shark. And Arzhen—

Arzhen was not better.

Who could help him?

Who could help them?

Why could he not think of anyone?

Anyone at all?

If only that dragon lord had truly died.

If only Oathran Alicei had perished as he was supposed to, as the prophecies had suggested...

But the dragon was alive.

He hated admitting it, but he could not be around Ruby right now. Her problems were spiraling and if Arzhen tied himself too closely to her, her complications might complicate his own.

It reminded him of that rude wolf healer from the temple.

Arzhen rubbed his head. The nightmares had started again.

The white mist...

The face he could never quite see, hovering just beyond the edge of memory. He had thought the medicine had cured him. He had thought the dreams were gone. But they were back now, creeping into his sleep like frost through cracks in a window frame.

"That healer from the temple," he said, his voice suddenly tired. "Father Rohan, or whatever. Contact him. Ask for more of his medicine. I have a headache."

Only that man’s medicine had been able to bring him back to sanity. Only that concoction had quieted the white mist and let him sleep without dreaming.

He needed him.

"Yes, sir." The aide bowed, already retreating toward the door. "We will contact him immediately."

"Good." Arzhen did not look up. His fingers were already leafing through the thin stack of Cecilia’s surviving prophecies, his eyes scanning the neat, precise handwriting.

The door closed and the room fell silent.

Arzhen Vasiliev sat alone with a dead woman’s words and a headache that pulsed behind his eyes like a second heartbeat, and wondered why he could not think of a single person who would help him without wanting something in return.

If only she were still here.

...who?

He crushed the thought like a beetle under his heel.

She was useless. She was a fraud. She was dead, and the dead could not help anyone.

But the handwriting on the page was so neat.

So... familiar.

Cecilia—